Standout Decks From Knights of the Frozen Throne (Day One)

I posted a ton of decks from the first day of the Knights of the Frozen Throne launch, so I wanted to call out a few of the decks that stood out from the rest. These might not all be the best decks, but they either saw a lot of play or brought something unique to the table.

Standout Decks of Knights of the Frozen Throne

Probably the most obvious addition to the list. J4CKIE went 23 and 0 with this deck. Warlock seems to be back with a vengeance, or at the very least everyone wants to see it succeed. Out of all the classes I saw played throughout the day it was Warlock that was most well represented.

Defile appears to be one of the keys to Warlock’s early success, while Bloodreaver Gul'dan allows you to swing the game and protect you from lethal.

Neutral

A lot of people were having success with Jade Druid, but Zalae used it to win 18 in a row on his way to Legend. Ultimate Infestation was one of the most highly touted cards coming into the release, and early on it seems to be the powerhouse we were promised. A card that was maybe a bit less on the radar was Spreading Plague which seems to fit nicely into the Jade package.

Neutral

Mage seemed to be mostly avoided for the most part, but weghuz ran this Jaina Control Mage that did rather well early in the day. I’m guessing people might have had their fill of Mage recently due to all the Freeze/Burn Mage that was being played.

Neutral

Warrior got a lot of attention in the first day, and one of the main lists I saw running around was various form of Tempo Warrior. Fibonacci put together a version that runs both the Warrior Death Knight and N’Zoth!

Neutral

Dog seemed hellbent on getting this deck to work. It’s an awesome concept, you can fill the board with Arcane Giant and/or you can go to fatigue with repeating Dead Man’s Hand over and over. One of the problems for this deck for the average player is that it seems to be pretty difficult to play.

Neutral

One of the decks a lot of people were kind of hoping would make a run is Highlander Priest. I saw many different versions, and they all seemed to have a decent amount of success. TicTac’s version got him to rank 5.

32 Comments

I played a similar list to Kolento’s druid to climb to legend and have ~75% winrate against quest mages. It’s REALLY easy to run them the hell over unless they get really lucky and get to jerk themselves off to 4-5 iceblocks (this is mage we’re talking about) they really should not ever win realistically unless you manage to REALLY screw up and somehow brick yourself.

Oh I completely missed the point and forgot to mention that you could very well be right about the other decks, I have little experience with most of them aside from messing around. The point was it’ll be interesting to see if decks like that stick around to ward off quest mage from ever actually being competitive.

In the grand tradition of Blizzard overreacting to EVERYTHING, we have a meta in which aggro can do nothing whatsoever, and each game will take 30 turns. I hate aggro as much as the next guy, but this is too far a shift – climbing the ladder for that golden epic won’t be worth the 1000hrs it takes to get there…

The fact aggro has ruled over the meta for such a long time is bad but, aggro decks are typically cheaper and more cost efficient in terms of actual money. Also having the meta be so control oriented leaves too much power to RNG. 90% of the games this expansion I feel have been decided on whoever gets the best Death Knight from Arfus or The Lich King. I hate to say it but I don’t mind aggro being a staple of the game if this clusterfuck is the alternative to the “Meta”.

Welcome to the 15 minimum turn expansion.
I hate control decks more than anything.
How about a quick game of hearthstone that goes to fatigue . No thanks.
Really hoping that it turns back to an 10 ,11 turn game.
The new cards are cool but so slooow. It seems like any Ag deck has til turn five then welcome to board clear and taunt city.
Im sure all the pros and streamers love it but us guys that want to smash out 5 games at lunchtime at work can now play 1 and if your me you lose on turn 29. lol.
Not complaining just what I have seen so far. Im sure Paper Scissors Rock will be back in force the next few weeks.
Until then Il see you at turn 29 , Warlock vs Preist ……………………………

Started out like 15-0 with the Warlock Control deck, but have since leveled out as meta is changing rapidly. There is ZERO aggressive decks the higher up rankings you go, and the deck as it stands listed ends up with many dead cards in its hands. The format will obviously change, but interesting to see how quickly the deck has become less relevant as the format has moved away from basically anything resembling small creatures. Fast decks like token Paladin are DOA.

The first day of new set is always very fun, but this time around it seems more troubling than usual. I don’t see ANY aggro deck having much if any chance of success in current format. Defile and warlock in general is a worse matchup than Jade Druid had vs. Quest Rogue a few months ago.

Yeah, I believe I read that Blizz prefers a slower meta (could be wrong on that). I personally like to play aggro a lot better, and prefer a meta where aggro and control are both playable. But aggro can lead to 4-5-6 turn kills, which maybe causes more rage-quit-I-HATE-Hearthstone issues than getting strangled to death over 25 turns and thinking you had a chance to win? I dunno.

But when I saw all the OP board-clear control cards added to the meta I saw the Warlock deck coming a mile away (no credit to me – it was a no-brainer). Tho it is hilarious to see that there is so much board clear in the Warlock deck list in the article and that even left out Felfire Potion / Wild Pyromancer / Doomsayer.

Bottom line – unless a Hearthstone genius figures out how to recover from a board clear every turn there will be NO aggro on the ranked ladder for the foreseeable future.

Normal meta rotations. Many Control decks and no aggro -> People will setup vs control removing early threats and removals -> People will figure this out and welcome back aggro. Just wait and suffer a bit ^^

Glad to see I over-reacted, at least for ranks 20 to 15.
Aggro Pirate Warrior (no changes from Un’goro) and Midrange Paladin (several card swaps for Frozen Throne) did just fine.
On the other hand, I did not see much Control, so your mileage may vary.